ALTER IDEM

 One thing I like about Indian mythology is that we have very beautiful stories about how rivers, plants, flowers, etc. came to be. The stories are so reassuring that sometimes, I wish science and its complicated theories didn't exist! According to Indian mythology, all plants have been created from the hair of Lord Brahma. I had read this in a book called Brahma's Hair by Maneka Gandhi. The book is a collection of myths and stories from all over the country - of about thirty sacred plants and trees, along with some historic and botanical details.  The book has very few stories from the South. Some flowers and trees that have mythological and religious importance here are missing. Of course, writing an exhaustive book on this subject would be quite a task! Recently, I have been curious about the mythology behind some flowers common to my surroundings. The plant is a parasite and is always found attached to the branches of huge trees.... The flowers bloom once a y...

This book gave me my first nightmare in recent memory! And, no.... I'm not referring to the 933 pages!! So much has already been written about Shantaram - 'powerful', 'original', 'vivid', 'compassionate', 'impressive', 'publishing phenomenon', 'extraordinarily vivid', 'gigantic, jaw-dropping, grittily authentic saga', ..... the book is all of these! Many people out there feel that it is one of the better books written about Bombay - the city. Maybe, it is. In fact, people who are familiar with the Bombay of the '80s will be able to tell the facts from the fiction. They'll, perhaps, recognise some of the people in the book..... Shantaram was meant to be my 'monsoon-book'. But, I started reading it sometime in December. After the first 200 pages or so, things became a little hectic and I picked up the book again last week....and, read a major portion on a very lonely day. In the book, t...

I'm unable to recollect when/ where I saw a hijra (transgender) for the first time. But, I do remember one incident that left me terrified of them for a long time. Sometime in my late-teens.... I had almost reached IB's (Iyengar's Bakery) for a quick snack. A hijra was harassing the maama @ IB 's for money. Simultaneously, she was also chasing the customers away by making obscene gestures....... Another time, I was on a train journey. Somewhere near N.K'taka, a group of hijras had entered the compartment and had harassed the men - quite successfully. Looking back, where was our guard? In cahoots with the hijras ? Probably..... To date, these two incidents remain my only real-life experiences with the hijras. The sole local transgender keeps to himself - when he is in town, i.e ....   In our films, of course, they are always portrayed in a crass manner - even when they are supposed to be blessing people during auspicious occasions. I have often wond...

In high school, my first language was Sanskrit. Correspondingly, Kannada became the third language. Third language Kannada was basically a repetition of what I learnt from Class 4 to Class 7. After Class 10, I didn't study Kannada formally at all.  In spite of that, I had absolutely no difficulty in reading/ understanding the 2010 Saraswati Samman winner by  Sri.S.L.Bhyrappa --- Mandra. The moment this book arrived a few months ago, I had decided to make it my 'monsoon reading'. At nearly 600 pages, of size slightly larger than the usual books, it had the qualifications to make my lonely evenings something to look forward to! Well! monsoon arrived late this year. By then, I had finished reading the book! Mandra is about the turbulent life of a classical musician, Pandit Mohan Lal. Panditji's journey begins from Haridwar  - as a bhajan- singing beggar-boy on the banks of the river Ganga - and reaches international fame, after plenty of twists and turns...... lik...

The other Sunday, the newspaper supplement had a write-up on some of the erstwhile royals of Tamil Nadu - the Sethupathis of Ramnad, one among them. The current 'Raja', while talking about his duties & responsibilities, had mentioned a century-old school in Madurai that he had to look after. So, imagine my astonishment when the book I read last week was a school days memoir of someone who had studied in the same Sethupathi School - the school where M.S.Subbulakshmi made her debut as a singer! 'Green Well Years' by Manohar Devadoss is about this gang of 5-6 adolescent boys. Schoolmates, these boys spend most of their free time together. Their favourite hangout place is a large, open well on the outskirts of Madurai. The water looks green....hence, the title! The author weaves a series of autobiographical incidents from his boyhood days with the history & geography of places in and around Madurai. In fact, life in Madurai during the early years of Indian In...

If a kid pesters you with 'Say sorry', you can be very sure that he/she will retort with something that rhymes with 'sorry'. If the kid is from Mangalore, the retort is sure to be ' Hampankatte Byaari ' ( Elsewhere in K'taka, the retort will be 'One plate poori ' ) ! Hampankatta (katte in local lingo) has been one of M'lore's business localities for centuries. Byaari is the local Muslim tradesman...a descendant of the 12th-13th century Middle East trader who settled down. This bit of nonsense - ' Sorry....Hampankatte Byaari ' - comes to me every time I pass by Hampankatta! And, that hot afternoon in May was no different. Thinking of HB & other things, I was walking down the main street. Huge buildings on either side of the road had barred Mr.Sunshine... making the whole experience of walking on a summer afternoon very eerie! Suddenly, this very attractive cover on a book-shop window caught my attention. Durgesh Nandini...

'Naayi - Neralu' - the first time I came across this term, about 3-4 years ago, I was in Puttur, a town near Mangalore. Everyone I met was talking about this film unit that was shooting for a Kannada movie of the same name in a heritage house nearby.The movie went on to win awards for the director, Girish Kasaravalli. I don't know if the movie did well at the box office, but, it was shown on TV, more than a year ago. My dad, who seldom watches movies, had just finished watching it when I had called him. Dad had liked the movie and even recommended it to me - unlike my husband's friends. They had watched it in the theatre with their kid when it was released. Turned out to be an embarassing experience for them - the kid insisted on yelling 'What a boring movie!' every now and then :D Sri.S.L.Bhairappa, now in his seventies, is a Kannada novelist who enjoys enormous readership. All his books, including 'Naayi- Neralu', have seen several re-prints and trans...